North Penn edges Council Rock North in classic

Thursday

May 16, 2019 at 10:55 PM

The Knights won 3-2 to advance to the district semifinals.

NEWTOWN — This one might only have been a quarterfinal, but it seemed like a district championship was on the line.

"That was really high-level boys volleyball from both teams," North Penn coach Ryan Genova said. "Just look at the fifth set. Neither team could get an advantage and it just kept going back and forth and back and forth.

"That just indicates you have two really good teams playing really good volleyball. Just a great match."

The first four sets of Thursday night's PIAA District One Class 3A tournament matchup between visiting North Penn and Council Rock North were pretty darn good, too.

The Indians take the first set; the Knights the second; the Indians the third; the Knights the fourth. Boom. It's 2-2 and off to the first-to-15 fifth set. Of course, it took more than 15 points to decide this one and there were four lead changes before the Knights finally prevailed.

"We knew it was going to be a really, really tough match," said North Penn senior Kevin Abraham, who had nine kills, 11 digs and four blocks. "Both teams were really playing great and it was exciting. We just tried to stick together as a team and give everything we had.

"And Council Rock North did the same thing. Both teams just really wanted it."

In the end, it was the No. 6 Knights taking the fifth set 18-16 and the match 3-2 to advance to Tuesday's semifinals against Pennsbury. The Falcons blanked Neshaminy 3-0 in another quarterfinal Thursday.

That match, which will be held at Bensalem, begins at 5:30 p.m. The other semifinal will follow as top-seeded Central Bucks East meets No. 12 Pennridge. The Patriots defeated Bensalem in the quarterfinals while the Rams knocked off No. 4 Upper Dublin. The top three finishers will qualify for the PIAA state tournament.

The loss ended the season for Council Rock North, the defending District One champions.

"I told the team after the game that they had absolutely nothing to hang their heads about," Council Rock North first-year coach Dan Bartleson said. "They put everything on the line and gave everything they had on every point.

"You can't ask for more than that from a team. We saw North Penn play the other night and we knew they had a very strong team. They have a lot of seniors on their team and we have a lot of seniors on ours. We're losing nine seniors from this team and I told them that I really wish that I could have worked with them longer. They are a great bunch of players and people and they did so much for this program."

The Knights admitted that fifth games have not been kind to them this season, but they prepared for the possibility of having to deal with one when they got ready for the Indians.

"All we talked about in practice was that we haven't done very well in fifth games," said North Penn senior Isaac Lambert, who had 10 kills and two aces. "And that we better be ready for them because it's the playoffs and it happened tonight.

"We knew we had to execute our game-plan and we did that. We talked about no matter what happens, we're not going down without a fight and we really showed a lot of fight tonight in a great match."

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